


Abraham

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam waits for the hand of God, but it never comes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abraham

The mountain path fights them on the ascent, steep and jagged. It throws treacherous pebbles and branches into Sam’s path without warning, sending him stumbling on shaky legs.  
  
 _See?_  he thinks.  _Even the earth doesn’t want this._  
  
Dean is steadfast ahead of him, never breaking stride. He has his leather jacket on like armor, a sharpened machete hanging from one fist’s grip. There’s no gun, but then there are no foes to kill today. Only each other.  
  
“Three miles from the foot of the trail, under a tree of sorrow, you’ll find it,” Dean reads from the paper in his hand. The scrap of napkin is stained and creased, crumpled over and over again by sweaty hands and thrown in the trash more than once by Sam.  
  
Sam looks, and it’s there. A weeping willow arches over a cluster of wormwood, all circling a flat slab of granite in the center. Emotions are flickering through Dean’s eyes, rapid and undecipherable. He shakes it off, then graces Sam with a lift of his eyebrows.  
  
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do this.”  
  


*

  
“I won’t do it,” Sam had said. “We’ll find another way.”  
  
“Sure,” Dean had answered, brittle and caustic. “Yeah, you’re right. I bet God just made a typo. We’ll ask Kevin to do a proofread on his next pass.”  
  
“You think this is funny?” Sam remembers the way anger had wormed around inside him, molten and painful and  _no exit_ , _no relief_. No solution. No way out.  
  
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Dean had asked, and no. No he hadn’t. He’d looked tired, and resolved.  
  
“Look,” he continued. “We knew going in that this wasn’t gonna be a walk in the park. There’s always a catch.”  
  
“This isn’t a catch.” Sam had been on his feet, yelling. “It’s fucking dirty poker.  _I_  took on the tasks.  _Me_. And it doesn’t even matter. No matter what – ” He’d stopped, because he’d seen understanding all over Dean’s face. Understanding and peace, like this had been the best possible outcome all along.  
  
“I won’t do it,” Sam had said again, but the words had sounded small.  
  


*

  
The surface of the stone is the color of rust, and Sam wonders what died here before. What other sacrifices were made, and were they worth it?  
  
There’s a ritual, because there’s always a ritual, and Sam watches dully as Dean squeezes a drop of blood from the palm of his hand into the bowl of Crowley’s and Castiel’s lifeblood. It’s mixed with the remnants of the demon tablet, crushed to dust after the final revelation.  
  
Dean shoves the bowl at him, a smile trembling on his lips. “You’re up.”  
  
Sam doesn’t move to take the bowl, and Dean’s smile collapses.  
  
“Sam,” he says, and there’s a note of pleading in his voice. “Come on.”  
  
Sam thinks about refusing. He thinks about upending the bowl, laying out all their sacrifice in a splash of red on the ground. Then they’ll have to start over. They’ll have to find another way, and he and Dean will walk back down the mountain and figure it out together.  
  
Sam takes the bowl.  
  
He reads the ritual, two brief Enochian phrases that turn the mix from blood to magic. His tongue feels thick from grief, but he manages to finish. It’s done now. He’s opened the door, and Dean is the only key.  
  


*

  
Dean looked, because Sam made him. Two months they researched. At night, Sam dreamed of Castiel’s vessel, still and prone, mighty wings stretched out in dusty imprints on either side. His blood sat next to Crowley’s in a sealed vial on a shelf in the library. Every morning, Dean touched it like a talisman.  
  
“Maybe there’s some other way,” Sam had said. “Some way of faking it.”  
  
“It’s not a lie detector, Sammy. It’s God, capital G. We’re good, but we’re not that good.”  
  
“Then someone else – ”  
  
“Who? It's specific, Sam. It has to be blood. You want to see if Dad left any other half brothers scattered around? Maybe pull Adam out of the pit just to off him again? We’re shit out of options, here.”  
  
Sam had slammed his book shut, pressed shaking fingers against the table. “Then we need to look harder because this…this isn’t an option.”  
  
Dean’s look had turned pitying then, and Sam remembers wanting to punch him, punch the open resignation off his face.  
  
“One choice. It’s me or a world full of supernatural evil, dude.”  
  
“You,” Sam had said fiercely. “Then it’s you.”  
  
Dean’s face had shifted into that confused sort of wonder that happened every time he realized Sam might want him around, even a little.  
  
Sam doesn’t remember much more about the conversation, only that it had ended with him fucking Dean over the table, spread out over the useless, priceless books that couldn’t do a simple thing like save a brother.  
  


*

  
Dean makes faces as he smears the congealing blood over his heart. “Good thing I don’t have to drink it,” he says, “or we’d never get this done.”  
  
There’s a particular sigil that needs to be drawn. Dean fucks it up, trying to draw upside-down, and Sam has another quick moment of rebellion. If the sigil is wrong, it won’t work. They probably need more practice. A few days. A week, even. Seven days reprieve to think of something else, come up with another plan.  
  
Something catches in Sam’s throat, and he’s coughing before he can swallow past it. His palms land on his knees, and the blood hits his sleeve in wet splatters, thick and clotting. It goes on for a long time, and his stomach is cramping when he finally manages to drag himself upright.  
  
Dean has known for months, but there’s still frozen anger on his face every time Sam has one of his fits. It’s fear at the root; nothing makes Dean angrier than something scary that he can’t fight.  
  
“I’m fine,” Sam pants. “I’m fine.” His lips are still sticky with blood, and he doesn’t want that to be Dean’s last memory of him, so he scrubs at them harder. He gulps from the water bottle he brought.  
  
Dean is watching him tightly, blood dripping messily down his stomach. Sam swallows.  
  
“Let me. You did it wrong.”  
  


*

  
In the last few weeks, they took to sleeping in the same bed. Dean was unwilling to leave his room, and Sam was unwilling to leave Dean, so they ended up fighting for space on Dean’s admittedly comfortable mattress.  
  
“You’ve been too big for this since you were twelve,” Dean had grumbled.  
  
Sam remembers being drunk off of hundred-year-old whiskey, too drunk, and putting clammy fingers over Dean’s lips.  
  
“No time,” he’d slurred. “Shut your face.”  
  
He’d been too drunk to get anything more than half-hard, but Dean had wrung a nerve-shaking orgasm out of him anyway. The whole night is a blur in Sam’s memory, but he thinks he was happy. He thinks he forgot trials and demons and dead friends and loneliness for a bit, consumed by the heat of Dean’s mouth.  
  
The next morning he’d thrown up four times, and Dean had mocked him with the malicious sort of glee reserved for older brothers and worst enemies. The nausea had worn off by dinner, and they’d eaten the greasiest pizza Dean could find in three counties.  
  
“Hey Sam,” Dean had murmured hours later, in the dark. “Thanks.”  
  
“For puking all day?”  
  
“For…I don’t know. I haven't had a good day in a while.”  
  
“Don’t thank me,” Sam had said viciously, fingers digging into Dean’s stomach. “Not with what I’m about to do to you.”  
  
And Dean had curled toward him, hooked an elbow around his neck and pulled. Sam had felt Dean’s mouth hot on the crown of his head. He thinks he remembers tears pricking at his eyes.  
  
“You’re not doing it to me, Sammy,” Dean had said. “You’re doing it for me.”  
  


*

  
“Go time,” Dean says.  
  
Sam is shaking, and he knows with a sudden, absolute certainty that he can’t do this.  
  
He stares down at the knife in his hand. It’s gleaming silver, sharpened within an inch of its life. They’d both wanted it to be as quick as possible, and dull knives don’t cut well through flesh.  
  
He’s frozen for so long that Dean pushes up on two elbows and stares at him. Dean's scared, Sam knows, but no one is as scared as Sam. No one else is about to lose his brother, no one who loves his brother as much as Sam loves Dean.  
  
“No,” he says, and backs away a step. “Not today. No. I can’t, I can’t do this, I…”  
  
Dean catches him, demon-quick, and yanks him back by the wrist.  
  
“Yes,” he says darkly. “You can. We’ve been over this. Cas died for this. You have to finish it.”  
  
Sam’s legs are done – they just give out from too many months of grief and bloody sickness and persistent fear. The granite snags a hole in his jeans on the way down, scoring away denim and skin.  
  
“Hey, hey.” Dean’s hands are on his cheeks, his neck, his hands, and when he picks his eyes up all he can see is Dean’s face, set and beautiful.  
  
“You told me to trust you.” Dean’s voice sounds rough. “You told me you could finish the tasks, and I believe that, okay? You were right – it had to be you.”  
  
Sam’s heart is pounding somewhere up around his ears, thundering above the wind and the birds. Dean is holding his face still, holding them eye-to-eye.  
  
“You have to do it. You’re the only one who’s strong enough. Dad couldn’t do it when it was me, and I couldn’t do it when it was you, but you…” He nods, jaw tight. Convincing them both. “This is right. You’ve got to do it.”  
  
Dean is pulling again, and Sam doesn’t have any fight left in him. He doesn’t think he’s crying, but then even his skin feels icy and numb. Somehow Dean’s lying back, and the knife is over his chest, both of Sam’s hands on the hilt.  
  
“Come on,” Dean is whispering. “I’ll help you, we’ll do it together.”  
  
Then the knife is against Dean’s heart, right in the middle of the complicated, swirling blood. Dean’s hands tighten over Sam’s, urging.  
  
Sam pushes in.  
  


*

  
Later, legends will spring up among hunters. People will say they felt it the moment all demons left the world forever, pulled back to their eternal torment. Like sigh of relief through the world. Hunters in the field will swear the demons they were battling simply sucked up out of their vessels like an exorcism, disappearing into the sky. There will be reports of single flashes of lightning, mighty and piercing. Tremors splitting the earth, animals howling, people speaking in tongues.  
  
Sam feels nothing, except the stillness of Dean’s breath.  
  
Dean fights at the end. It’s a human response, and Sam has to hold him down until he bleeds out. His skin goes white, and he shudders for a while. Then he’s gone.  
  
Sam sits in the clearing for a long time. He doesn’t know if it worked, and he doesn’t have anyone to call and check. He’s long since abandoned anyone Not-Dean, and he doubts he’ll ever be able to befriend another person again, with what he’s done.  
  
He thinks about the crossroads, about witches who can do anything for a price, about angels who can breach heaven and hell in exchange for souls or lives.  
  
He gets up and wipes the knife clean.  
  
He carries Dean back down the mountain, heavy as he is. He hands him to Garth, waiting at the foot of path.  
  
“Burn him,” he says. “It’s over.”  
  


*

  
It’s the worst when people thank him. Young hunters, awestruck, approach him in roadhouses all over the country. His height and his long hair give him away no matter where he goes. The young ones have never even fought a demon, but they’ve heard stories.  
  
 _Don’t you understand that I failed?_  he wants to ask them, but of course they don’t. Only Garth and Kevin know the truth behind the last trial, and that Sam couldn’t find a way out of it.  
  
When he’s forty, he marries a woman named Vanessa who’s never heard of hunters or the Men of Letters, and who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. He’s not about to pass his fucked-up genes on to any children, but his wife is beautiful and smart and gives him a reason to keep getting up in the morning. She gets him out of the life, and that’s all Sam can really ask. It’s not the suburban paradise Dean had dreamed for him, but Sam can't bring himself to hope for anything more.  
  
“You never talk about your family,” she says to him. “What happened to them?”  
  
“I had a brother,” Sam tells her. “He died, but…”  _I think he’s probably waiting for me_ , is what he wants to tell her.  _In heaven or hell, or maybe somewhere in between._  
  
“I still miss him,” Sam says. “I don’t really like to talk about it.”


End file.
